4 posts categorized "Course Correction"

By Ginny Gilder: Oh, ye Olympians, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways: I love thy exuberance, thy unalloyed passion, and unabashed desire to excel. I love thy seizing of the moment and the spotlight to showcase thy best. I love thy allowing, nay, inviting me to glimpse the size of your hearts, to cherish your boldness, and to embrace the offering of your humanity, its unique expression and exercise. I love that you somehow make my expression and pursuit of my own humanity, albeit far removed from the venue of sport, snow or ice, and likely with less superior skill and less relentless determination, seem possible and worthy of pursuit.
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Marching into Opening Ceremonies is a big moment for athletes all over the world, a public, and oh-so-welcome acknowledgement of the extraordinary effort and amazing accomplishment required to land in the middle of this global phenomenon. Unquestionably, it’s the right time to extol the assembly of top athletes, to marvel over their histories and imagine what lies directly ahead in the next sixteen days of Olympic competition. But it’s absolutely the wrong time to characterize the efforts these elites have made to reach the top echelons of their various sports as some kind of sacrifice.
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The Rio Games mark the end of the twelfth decade of the modern Olympics, an impressive track record, yet far outstripped by the tenure of the original Games, which started in 776 B.C. and lasted nearly twelve centuries. Given the most recent news that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) may now consider banning an entire country from participation for cheating, I’m not optimistic they will survive to the end of this century.
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“I don’t mind being gay, but I’m never gonna fly that rainbow flag,” I protested to my girlfriend, Lynn. We were on a California beach near Santa Cruz celebrating my friend Camille’s fiftieth birthday, a group of a dozen lesbians, most of whom were dancing, clapping, prancing around the beach with big rainbow flags held high. Lynn and I stood on the edge of the group, shoulders hunched, our hands noticeably empty of any sticks hoisting multi-colored fabric, thrust deep in our pants pockets.
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